The “Vanishing Evidence” series is a general summary of years of
detailed observation and research. The full documentation supporting
the conclusions expressed in this series of articles, including dozens
of photographs, will be published in my forthcoming book, Modern Fraud:
The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret. I
make no attempt here to “prove” such a complicated case as forgeries and
the deliberate destruction of African artifacts in just a few short articles.
Rather, this series is simply a preliminary report on my findings, which
will be given extensive treatment in my book Modern Fraud. - MA

SCOPE OF “THE VANISHING EVIDENCE” SERIES

I originally wrote "The Vanishing Evidence of Classical African Civilizations"
series in The
Gaither Reporter in 1995-1996. The 3-part series documents
the unintentional human-aided deterioration, as well as the deliberate
and massive alteration, mutilation, and destruction of ancient Egyptian
artifacts. The series covers three broad categories of this vanishing
evidence: the Temple Evidence (part I), the Tomb Evidence
(part II), and the Museum Evidence (part III). Before
writing the series, I had meticulously studied artifacts and images at
temples, tombs, pyramids, museums, and ancient residential sites throughout
Egypt and Nubia (1990, 1994-1995). I also carefully examined ancient Egyptian
and Nubian artifacts at nearly all of the major museums, institutes, and
libraries in eleven European countries (1989-1990), and in dozens of cities
throughout the U.S. and Canada (1991-1992). Overall, I painstakingly
studied well over a million images and artifacts before writing the “The
Vanishing Evidence” series.

My initial goal was simply to follow the path of research outlined by
the eminent scholar, Dr. Chancellor Williams in The
Destruction of Black Civilization (1974), and conduct primary
research on ancient Black civilizations. As Williams pointed
out, the accurate knowledge of African science, social organization, and
advanced spiritual systems can only be known from an unbiased first-hand
study of the history and artifacts. Though I began my extensive multi-country
research tour with a mission of documenting the specific details of the
advanced African civilizations of ancient Egypt and Nubia, a quite different
and unexpected theme emerged in every region that I studied. I was
struck by the specific patterns of deliberate alterations and defacement
of the artifacts. These patterns became clear after I had visited
the initial group of European museums. What I noticed most was that
these acts were more than simply knocking off the noses of statues, they
involve a much broader assault on ancient Black images.

The pair statue from the Tomb of Ikhetneb has lost most of its original
paint on the faces and upper body of the two images, while much of the
original paint on the legs and feet still survive. It seems evident
that the darker paint has been deliberately erased on the face and upper
body, thus giving the images the illusion of a white-skin appearance.

METHODS OF DESTRUCTION AND ALTERATION

My observations of the evidence are careful and are supported by photographic
and video documentation. The extensive study of over a million artifacts
and images gave me the keen power of observation to make analyses of the
same materials that are also available to Egyptologists, although most
of them have not studied the volume of the materials that I have examined.
When the artifacts in question were examined meticulously, I found that
the methods used to change or damage the images are varied, and they include:
subtly altering the shape of the nose on statues by using some type of
sanding device; adding on false noses; reshaping or completely destroying
the face on temple and tomb walls; lightening the color of the face and
body paint on statues and paintings; completely eliminating the paint on
statues and paintings and thus making the images appear “white”; destroying
the lower facial structure, particularly the chin and jaw area; putting
in false bluish-gray inlaid eyes; plastering over temple images with White
Portland Cement during ongoing “conservation” work; and creating outright
forgeries! These acts of fraud and deliberate destruction is what
I call the handiwork of modern conspirators. I was stunned by such
an angry, vicious, and widespread attack against Black images by the enemies
of Classical African Civilizations.

MODERN FORGERIES

One of the most absurd invention of the conspirators is the forged statues
of Ra-Hotep and Nofret in the Cairo Museum. I present detailed and
concrete evidence in my forthcoming book, Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret (also see part 3 of this series on the Museum Evidence) that there is a list of specific artistic rules which are consistently applied to statue after statue throughout
the pyramid age.[1]
Although some writers would attempt to argue to the contrary, the fact
that there was a body of specific artistic rules is demonstrated by the
tens of thousands of statues and paintings that are presented in exactly
the same way across various sites and cites throughout all of the major
periods: the old, middle, and new kingdoms. Thus, these shocking forgeries
make no artistic sense as they violate a long list of clearly defined
rules, according to the ancient Egyptian rule system. Further, these
fabricated European-looking statues do not make any cultural or historical
sense, and it is consistent that they were found (or rather created
by modern hands) during the 19th century, which has been called by some
historians as “The Great Age of Fakes.” There is no doubt that the
Ra-Hotep and Nofret forgeries stand completely outside of the ancient Egyptian
artistic, cultural, and historical reality.

One of the great forgeries of the 19th century
which has already been proven is that of the famous Queen Tetisheri.
The statue of “Queen Tetisheri” was purchased by the British Museum in
1890, and this fake piece (with its facial features resembling most Europeans)
was paraded around the world until it was first suspected as a fraud in
1984. This fake Tetisheri statue was showcased in the British Museum
special exhibit on forgeries in 1990, but not before this forgery fooled
experts and deceived the world for 100 years![2]

This limestone statuette inscribed with the name of Queen Tetisheri
was long regarded as an important piece for the study of ancient Egyptian
sculpture of the late 17th and early 18th dynasties. Now, however,
this world renown statuette is regarded as a modern forgery.

WHO ARE THE CONSPIRATORS?

Who are the conspirators responsible for these acts of destruction,
alteration and invention is a basic question that must be answered.
Brian Fagan in his book on The
Rape of Egypt(1975) documents a list of culprits: the Christian
Copts who destroyed statues and monuments; the conquering
Arabs who dismantled ancient buildings; and the 18th and 19th century
European
travelers, adventurers, and archeologists who were treasure hunters,
plunderers, and looters. It was during the 19th century that a vast
number of ancient Egyptian artifacts were excavated, but most of these
discoveries were not adequately documented, with original on-site photographs
and detailed field reports, which are now standard procedures within the
archeological field. The systematic documentation of archaeological excavations
did not develop until many years after volumes of artifacts were already
taken from their original African sites and eventually placed in museums.
Indeed, it is a sketchy record of how most of these artifacts were discovered
and eventually made it onto museum floors.

This brings us to the identification of a large group of conspirators,
who are the handlers of the excavated artifacts. This
group includes excavators, antiquities dealers, museum curators and
directors, and restorers and conservationists. Somewhere
between the original excavation of the artifacts, to their transport, sale
and acquisition, storage, cleaning, conservation, and finally their display
on the museum floor there has been a diligent effort at altering, reworking,
and “touching up” the facial features of countless statues. The conspirators
who perpetrate these acts are behind the scenes actors who use a hit and
run strategy of defacement and alteration of the art. They
hide their hands from public view, but the results of their fraudulent
and destructive activity is plain to see by anyone who carefully examines
the evidence, as their pattern of fraud is highly distinctive. The lack
of original documentation of many excavated artifacts has made it easy
for these conspirators to commit their fraud. It is well known that many
great artifacts of ancient Egypt were destroyed by the hands of plunderers
during the widespread looting and trading in antiquities that went on for
centuries, but what is not well known is the full story of the artifacts
that did survive the wave of plunderers and make it into modern museum
collections. I show in Modern Fraud that a large number
of these surviving artifacts have undergone a racial makeover at the hands
of modern conspirators. The results of their fraudulent work are the countless
altered artifacts, reworked pieces, fake genealogies, and a host of forged
statues.

The most recent revelation of the racist fabrications by this group
of handlers, or more specifically Western museum directors,
is reported in the current issue of Archaeology
Magazine 54 (September-October 2001, p. 27). This report is associated
with an article by Peter Lacovara et al. Archaeology
reported
that in the absence of scholarship the directors of the
Niagara
Falls Museum in Ontario, Canada “fabricated pedigrees” for many of
their Egyptian mummies in the mid-nineteenth century. The most imaginative
of these fake pedigrees, or false identities, was created for a bearded
male mummy of the Roman period. The museum officials invented the
following elaborate story for him which is a complete myth: “General Ossipumphnoferu
the General in Chief of Thotmes III. ... He was a man of military skill,
also a famous magician. He was 60 years old when he died. The
scar on his forehead was caused by an enraged elephant while defending
the king from his onslaughts. A palace was erected for the general
near that of the king.” The museum officials took their scandalous
activity even further, as for many years the “general” was displayed in
the coffin of
Iawttayesheret, a high-ranking woman from the 25th
dynasty, which was 700 years before his time! It is incredible that
the directors of a public museum would take an unidentified Roman period
mummy, with a European facial appearance, put him in a woman’s coffin
from 700 years earlier, and then create a bogus identity for him as a famous
general during a period which was another 700 years earlier than the coffin
he was buried in! Eventhough this mummy and other artifacts at the
museum were not studied comprehensively by an Egyptologist, this is yet
another case which documents that Western museum directors would
go to any lengths in the 19th and early 20th century to falsify evidence.

Currently, there is no doubt that this list of conspirators includes
local Egyptian government workers, who are carrying out many
acts of destruction on a regular basis. These men either work for the Egyptian
government on “conservation” projects, or for various European or North
American archeological teams. On several occasions in the 1980s and 1990s,
these unsupervised minimally-skilled government workers have been caught
on video tape plastering over temple images and inscriptions! In
fact, it is impossible to visit the Karnak Temple in Luxor and not see
the recent defacement, and it is suspicious that with rare exception Egyptologists
are silent about this matter.

WHAT ARE THEIR MOTIVES

After examining a vast body of artifacts, it seems evident that the
ultimate motives of these groups of conspirators from the 19th century
to the present is to eliminate the Black images from the ancient Egyptian
historical record. This motivation is consistent with the racist
views of many of the 19th and early 20th century Egyptologists who made
many ridiculous assertions about Black people having little to no role
in ancient Egypt, and that this was a civilization founded by white or
Semitic people from the North. These baseless claims were widespread
within the ranks of Egyptologists, and they helped inspire both H. M. Herget’s
1941 National Geographic Magazine paintings of pale-skinned
Egyptians and the imaginary white images created by Hollywood, which together
have deceived the public for the past half century.[3]
This nonsense was exposed in the 1950s by the late Senegalese scholar,
Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop. Diop assembled an awesome body of evidence
to document the Black foundation of ancient Egypt and to expose the dishonest
discourse of Western Egyptologists who were, as he put it, “performing
intellectual acrobatics” to avoid dealing with concrete evidence to support
their contentions about the Northern origins of ancient Egyptian civilization.[4]
The mainstream Egyptologist Bruce Trigger in The American Discovery
of Ancient Egypt (1995) discusses Diop’s impact and that it is because
of his work that ancient Egypt is now seen by mainstream scholars as an
African
nation. Trigger also comments that “the white racist rhetoric that
permeated most early twentieth-century writings about the development of
Egyptian civilization has long been abandoned, [but] ideas formulated at
the time have continued to influence thinking about the origins and nature
of Egyptian civilization.”[5]

The “white racist rhetoric” that Trigger describes as permeating early
twentieth century writings is simply a continuation of the same racist
views held in the 19th century, and it is within this climate that the
behind the scenes handlers had both the motives and the opportunity
to deface images, alter facial features, and create racist forgeries.

RESPONSE TO THE SERIES

Since I first wrote "The Vanishing Evidence" series in 1995-1996, there
has been much discussion, and many individuals across the country have
indicated to me that they have also observed both the human-aided deterioration
and the deliberate acts of destruction against Black images and artifacts.
I have examined photographs of several of these individuals who have traveled
to Egypt at various times, and for the most part only a very small percentage
of their photographs are useful, because the individual photographers are
not trained on how to systematically document the damage. However,
some of the images are invaluable as they document the ongoing assault
on Black images at major temple sites. It is now known by many that
the physical evidence of classical African civilizations is vanishing before
our eyes in essentially every geographical area. Many people are
now aware that the human-aided decay, distortion of the artifacts, and
deliberate defacement is widespread and this damage is most obviously visible
at popular temple sites throughout Egypt.

Predictably, there have been a few white writers who have made ignorant
comments about the “The Vanishing Evidence” series without even looking
at the artifacts in question! They have not examined the first-hand
evidence that I outline in the series, but they attack without anything
other than empty emotion. They are in blind support of the fraudulent
activity and racist scholarship of the 19th and 20th century. These people
subscribe to Western colonial scholarship, eventhough this scholarship
was born and bred in the brutal period of European expansion and colonialism.
Egyptology as a discipline originated in this shameful 19th century era,
and still maintains -- with little improvement -- its arrogant colonial
discourse about African culture and civilizations. Any research that
challenges this Western paradigm is automatically attacked by the apologists
of this paradigm as “wrong” “misinformed,” or “pseudo-scientific.”
These individuals are willing to do whatever it takes to ignore evidence,
and in some cases lie and mislead the public.

PREVIOUS DOCUMENTATION

After I had begun organizing my information on the vanishing evidence
theme that had emerged from my museum and field work, I later found out
that a portion of my work of documenting the ongoing deterioration and
destruction in Egypt had already been anticipated by the accomplished Egyptologist
John Romer nearly 20 years earlier.[6]
On his website, Romer republished a 1997 essay which summarizes his many
years of work in the King’s Valley and is entitled “The
Valley of Death,” wherein the author wrote: “The warning has been
sounded. Loud and clear. Egypt’s famed Valley of the Kings...is
in danger itself of the death it silently encloses. In less than
25 years—unless something is done urgently—the valley of priceless ancient
tombs could become the valley of ochre mud. And responsible is the
planet’s prime agent of destruction—man himself.” Lastly, there
is also video footage shot by Ashra Kwesi in his video series on “The
African Origin of Civilization” that I recall viewing in the 1980s.
Kwesi’s short footage showed local Arab workers chopping and plastering
over wall material at one of the Luxor area temples. Kwesi's footage
was probably my first exposure to the documentation which shows the
vanishing evidence of classical African civilizations.

An updated version of “The Vanishing Evidence” series, complete with
numerous photographs, form an important section in my upcoming book on
Modern
Fraud, which concerns the Ra-Hotep and Nofret forgeries.

[1] I list some of these rules in
Manu Ampim, “Ra-Hotep and Nofret: Modern Forgeries in the Cairo Museum?”
in Egypt: Child of Africa (1994), pp. 207-212. I will discuss the
full body of these rules in my forthcoming book, Modern Fraud: The Forged
Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret.

[3] William Hayes, “Daily Life in
Ancient Egypt,”
National
Geographic Magazine 80 (1941): 419-515. H.
M. Herget’s 32 imaginary color paintings with pale-skinned Egyptians
are used as illustrations for Hayes’ article, eventhough Hayes states “the
Egyptians are, and always have been, Africans,” and that they are a “brown”
and “brunet” (i.e. dark brown or reddish brown) skinned people. This
deliberate public deceit and racism is still being carrying on by KMT
Magazine, which uses these same dishonest images created by Herget
more than a half century ago. For example see: KMT
premiere issue (spring 1990), pp. 9, 11, 16; and KMT
vol. 5, no. 4 (Winter 1994-95), pp. 45-46, 60. KMT
now seems to have adopted a new favorite set of modern racist drawings
by Winifred Brunton to illustrate its various articles; for the complete
set of the Brunton drawings, see KMT,
vol. 1, no. 4 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 52-61. Also see KMT,
vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 1997), p. 31; and vol. 12, no. 3 (Fall 2001), pp.
1, 74. [Return to text]

Prof. Manu Ampim is a historian and primary researcher on African
and African American culture & history. He is director of Advancing
The Research and can be reached at PO Box 18623, Oakland, CA 94619,
or E-Mail: Profmanu@acninc.net. Telephone: (510) 482-5791 or 1-877-794-0700 x 3780